The shoe cabinet art has been well developed as illustrated by the U.S. patents now briefly discussed.
Conventional shelved cabinets with a swinging front door have been provided with ventilation for storage of shoes in Ser. No. 736,003; Aug. 11, 1903 by V. P. Orrick. Shoe storage racks have used pins for storing shoes, as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 1,447,228; Mar. 6, 1923 by C. B. Tibbetts.
Corner cabinet structure for shoe storage in U.S. Pat. No. 2,941,649; June 21, 1960 by F. J. Thrower, et al., requires many conventional pull drawers about large enough for storage of a single pair of shoes. Two slidable tiered racks for shoes stored with toes to the front are pulled out in drawer-like fashion in U.S. Pat. No. 3,022,897; Feb. 27, 1962 by W. Archer, et al.
A semi-circular configuration of a hand carried shoe case is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 2,906,407; Sept. 29, 1959 by H. A. France, wherein the shoes are hung on pegs with toes pointed inwardly about a core member. The shoes are removed by means of circumferential opening covers that peel back to allow access respectively on opposite sides of an upper carrying handle.
Swivel mounted shoe shelves are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,219,248; Aug. 26, 1980 by A. Goldberg. Thus, vertically pivoted shelf sets, for storing a pair of shoes on each shelf, are operable from a front panel to pivot the cabinet front door panel and accompanying set of shelves for access to the shoes on the shelves.
Problems unresolved in the prior art shoe cabinets include the lack of facilities for comparative display and neat storage of a wide range of shoes of different styles and sizes in a small compact easily accessible space. Furthermore to produce furniture of reasonable cost it is necessary to ship parts in compact packages and assemble them at the point of use. If this is to be done there are critical parts involved relating to functioning of shelves, as well as conventional panels for shelves and side wall cabinet structure, etc. The labor of assembly is critical, and in the case of customer assembly the convenience of assembly without significant carpentry skills and tools is critical in consumer acceptance.
It is therefore an objective of this invention to improve the state of the specialty shoe storage and display furniture art.